I sat on the grass at the park today next to one of those rubber bracelets that support a cause. This one was blue and white and green and I picked it up just to see what it said. It said, "Kaimba Rebuild Sierra Leone."
I ask you. How on earth am I supposed to settle in as an oblivious North American in a boring US city if that other continent keeps chasing me like this?
I laid back in the grass. It was the sort of day that always reminds me of Rwanda: the sky was perfect, and the grass was perfect, and the temperature was perfect (80F, in case you are wondering what the perfect temperature is). I felt the sun warm me and the breeze cool me, and I could have been in Nairobi or Arusha. I could have been in my hammock between the trees on the steep hill down to the lake in Kibuye.
I thought about my hammock, the one I bought in Nicaragua and hung in Rwanda, and how once when I had a guest staying with me, the guest offered to cook and I accepted (I always accepted when guests offered to cook, which they did strangely often; perhaps I cook badly), and when said guest brought a plate out to me, I took it and sat back into the hammock, only the hammock had condensed itself, as hammocks do when there is no one in them, and I flipped backwards completely over the hammock and down the hill, landing upside down against a tree with pasta and tomato sauce everywhere, and I just sat there, laughing between trying to catch my breath.
I think they invented the word wistful for the way I feel when I look up at jet trails.
I ask you. How on earth am I supposed to settle in as an oblivious North American in a boring US city if that other continent keeps chasing me like this?
I laid back in the grass. It was the sort of day that always reminds me of Rwanda: the sky was perfect, and the grass was perfect, and the temperature was perfect (80F, in case you are wondering what the perfect temperature is). I felt the sun warm me and the breeze cool me, and I could have been in Nairobi or Arusha. I could have been in my hammock between the trees on the steep hill down to the lake in Kibuye.
I thought about my hammock, the one I bought in Nicaragua and hung in Rwanda, and how once when I had a guest staying with me, the guest offered to cook and I accepted (I always accepted when guests offered to cook, which they did strangely often; perhaps I cook badly), and when said guest brought a plate out to me, I took it and sat back into the hammock, only the hammock had condensed itself, as hammocks do when there is no one in them, and I flipped backwards completely over the hammock and down the hill, landing upside down against a tree with pasta and tomato sauce everywhere, and I just sat there, laughing between trying to catch my breath.
I think they invented the word wistful for the way I feel when I look up at jet trails.
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